Potluck Club Tips and Ideas

Nancy Vienneau is a seasoned pot-lucker. Read her suggestions for starting a successful supper club at your home.

Looking forward to the new year, what changes are you considering?

Eat less red meat, eat more whole grains, eat less white sugar, eat more leafy greens…to the list of healthy food resolutions how about adding eat less frequently on the run, and eat more often with friends?

Why not start a potluck? My friend Gigi Gaskins and I started our own in June 2009 as a way to foster community. Aptly named the Third Thursday Potluck, we meet every third Thursday of each month and for the past year have been sharing our adventures with Relish.

Here are some tips we’ve assembled from our pot-lucking experience to help get you launch a community of your own:

<strong>Have a Co-Host</strong>

Two heads, and two sets of hands are always better than one. Party planning and execution is much more enjoyable when you have someone to share in the work and the fun. It sparks the creative flow, and broadens the pool of people to invite.

You and your co-host each have strengths, which you’ll target in your division of labor. Gigi is the designer in our duo, who creates the email invitation each month. I figure out food quantities and the shopping list.

Because we alternate the potluck location between our homes, it balances the chore of readying your place for guests. It also keeps the rhythm of the potlucks interesting.

Since our potluck has always been seasonally driven, the harvest-of-the-moment is our overriding theme. On occasion, Gigi and I have been more specific. When Third Thursday fell on Saint Patrick’s Day, “Everything Green” became the order of the day. Another month, we had Breakfast for Dinner, a meal change-up that everyone likes. Say it’s October, and you’d like to have Bavarian style Oktoberfest? Go for it!

You may not have 25 or more everyday dinner plates (or dessert plates!) in your cupboard, but you can find them at thrift stores, discount warehouses, or the Goodwill for little expense. You can amass the flatware, in similar fashion.

We like the look of mix-and-match.

Scout out places like Dollar Tree for low-cost wine glasses. Available everywhere, Mason jars, in half pint and pint sizes, work well too. For cloth napkins, bandanas make a colorful choice.

An alternative: Ask each guest to bring her own plate and fork.

<strong>Cooking Strategy</strong>

Gigi and I brainstorm, and decide on a couple of dishes, one being a centerpiece to the meal. A good rule of thumb is to prepare a dish that will feed 10-12. For our first potluck, we made roast chicken, orange-fennel salad, and pavlova. We figured if nobody came, we’d have a meat, salad, and dessert. Our fears, of course, were unfounded. Each month, we are amazed by what arrives on the table.